Create a 'removePackages' function to easily remove packages from the miniCRAN repo

[paulponcet]

[andrie]

Please provide more information about the specific nature of your request.

For example:

• What do you want to happen with dependencies and reverse dependencies of the removed package?
• What is the use case for deleting a package, compared to simply recreating the miniCRAN repo?

The workaround is simple:

• Delete the package
• Rebuild the index file

Pull requests welcome.

[paulponcet]

A use case may happen for instance when one package inside a miniCRAN repo is accepted on CRAN.

Would you consider the following function as a good candidate for a pull request - up to dependencies or reverse dependencies management? (In the end it would better be called deletePackage rather than removePackage to avoid any detrimental confusion with remove.packages)

deletePackage <- function(pkgs = NULL, path = NULL, type = "source", Rversion = R.version) {
  a <- pkgAvail(repos=path, type = type, Rversion = Rversion)
  w <- which(a[,"Package"] %in% pkgs)
  ext <- switch(type, source = ".tar.gz", mac.binary = ".tgz", win.binary = ".zip")
  pkgs <- paste(a[w,"Package"], "_", a[w,"Version"], ext, sep = "")
  unlink(file.path(path, repoPrefix(type = type, Rversion = R.version), pkgs))
  updateRepoIndex(path, type = type, Rversion = Rversion)
  invisible(pkgs)
}

[achubaty]

@paulponcet the function you are proposing should be vectorized to handle multiple package types, the way addPackage does (using an lapply internally for type).

[tonytonov]

@achubaty Came across this issue looking for the same "remove package" functionality. Would you still be interested in adding that if I vectorize the code above and send a PR?

[achubaty]

@tonytonov Vectorizing the code is a good start but Andrie's points above still hold. For me, I would want unused dependencies to also be removed. PRs welcome!

[tonytonov]

@achubaty @andrie You have probably seen it, but is there any chance you could review the PR in the near future? I'm afraid soon I'll completely forget what I've coded there.